Asian Americans as History’s Scapegoats: From a Global Pandemic to Workplace Discrimination (APHAM)

It is human nature to search for someone or something to blame in times of hardship. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on our day-to-day lives as well as our mental and physical health. As a result, Americans who have been negatively affected have found a scapegoat: AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) communities. Former President Donald Trump repeatedly labeled the Coronavirus the “Chinese virus,” further contributing to the anti-Asian mindset that these angry United States citizens adopted long before Trump. They blame Asian Americans for a global pandemic when in reality, this group has no connection to the virus or its origins. Yet they are continually harassed throughout the United States, not only putting their own livelihood at risk but their future generations’ as well. 

Due to a history of scapegoating, Asian Americans have been denied employment and high-level positions in the workplace. From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to a nationwide pandemic, members of our society have both consciously and subconsciously discriminated against Asian Americans, and this trend continues today, inhibiting their workplace success. 

Discrimination has often been neglected and labeled as a distributive problem rather than for what it is: a fundamental social issue rooted in inequality—and Asian American discrimination is no exception. In 2020, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a special report. It provided information regarding discrimination against Asian Americans in the American workforce and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) to address such issues. In 1966, Asian-American officials and managers composed less than one percent of all Officials and Managers, and by 2013, Asian-Americans’ participation rate in this category had increased to 5.53 percent. While showing little increase after 47 years, this change still created an illusion of Asian American success in that Asian Americans saw consistent increases in participation rates from 1966 through 2013 in all nine job categories. 

In 2012, the EEOC settled a lawsuit on behalf of approximately 70 Filipino American hospital workers. The EEOC alleged that the workers endured ongoing harassment from top levels of hospital management because of the workers’ national origin. However, during an incident in the fiscal year of 2014, the EEOC reached more than 11,700 Asian Americans through 240 events across the county tailored, providing outreach and education materials in multiple languages. Such efforts elucidate how there have been efforts to mitigate this discretion and provide necessary resources to those inflicted.

Throughout 2020, the nuances of discrimination law and protections have been tested. Tom Spiggle, an employment lawyer, highlights in his recent Forbes article the complex issue of this inequity, explaining how if an employer is “afraid of the coronavirus and institutes a new hiring policy that says ‘anyone born in China need not apply,’ this would be discrimination based on national origin, not race.” Discrimination against Asian Americans because of COVID-19 can occur in multiple ways, adds another lawyer to this issue. Employers, of course, can test workers for COVID-19 and not hire someone with the virus, but it is illegal to deny employment to someone based on the fact that they are East Asian. Spiggle illustrates how this issue has led to Asian American harassment and isolation in hostile work environments. Personally, I’ve seen examples of this, where I’ve seen my Asian American coworkers and friends having to deal with so-called jokes about having the coronavirus. 

To add another element to this issue, educational achievement does not always correlate to leadership representation for Asian Americans. This phenomenon of racial stereotyping is called the “bamboo ceiling,” which has consistently existed throughout American history. For example, in Silicon Valley, CA, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (APIAs) represent the largest proportion of employees—even exceeding white Americans—but white employees are 154% more likely to be executives compared to APIAs. Another study has shown that within Fortune 500 companies, fewer than 2% of executives are APIAs, less than Whites, Blacks, and Latinx, while in law, 11% of associates, but only 3% of law-firm partners, are APIA. These are clear examples of the underrepresentation of Asian Americans in the workplace, suggesting a bias against Asian Americans as employees.

In his article “Paper Tigers,” Wesley Yang states that “the failure of Asian-Americans to become leaders in the white-collar workplace does not qualify as one of the burning social issues of our time.” The bamboo ceiling can go undetected, and as Yang put it, “part of the insidious nature of the Bamboo Ceiling is that it does not seem to be caused by overt racism.” Asian American discrimination is on the back burner because its effects have not always been discussed. Society is blind to this fact of discrimination because many are so invested in the fact that Asian Americans have had such academic success as a “model minority,” and as a result, people question how such a group could have trouble obtaining leadership positions in the workplace among other things. 

The issue of discrimination will never be able to cease entirely. However, society can take steps to lessen the effect of such inequity that Asian Americans experience. From resisting the impact of racial stereotyping in hiring and administrative decision-making to using more holistic and less “Westernized” models of leadership, workplace discrimination will hopefully become less prevalent in society.

by Abby Sullivan